My first semester of graduate film school, I saw a short film about an elevated train. It made a big impression on me in terms of opening up my mind to what a film could be. It took me more than ten years to track down that film, and luckily it is on YouTube. Here it is.
The film is called "The Wonder Ring" and it is an early film by avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who was commissioned to document NY's Third Avenue elevated train before it was torn down. It's a simple short, silent documentary that, like I said, hints at the expressive possibilities of the form. Here's a brief description of it by someone else, Fred Camper: "the film focuses on the rhythms of the ride and reflections in train windows, finding a real-world version of the superimpositions Brakhage would later create in the lab."
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